Storm petrel seabirds can smell their relatives

Research published in Animal Behaviour, which demonstrated that storm petrels are able to pick out their relatives from smell alone, was covered by the BBC Nature website this week.

The authors, Francesco Bonadonna and Ana Sanz-Aguilar, from the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, showed that European storm petrels, Hydrobates pelagicus, were able to distinguish kin from nonkin odours. They suggest that this may help the birds to avoid inbreeding and select an appropriate mate. Their results, the first of their kind in birds, suggest that sophisticated olfactory communication is relevant in birds, and leads to important behavioural traits such as philopatry.